AUSTIN — Tuition should be frozen at all Texas colleges and universities for four years, or at least until they can prove they deserve the price hike, according to one of the state's top lawmakers.

Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee, proposed three bills Thursday that would dramatically alter the control universities have over how much they charge for a college education in Texas.

Two of the bills are top priorities of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and will probably pass in the Republican-dominated Senate. Senate Bill 19 would freeze all tuition and fees until 2022. Senate Bill 18 would repeal Texas' tuition set-aside program, which requires all public colleges and universities to reserve up to 20 percent of their tuition revenue to use as financial aid for needy students.

Senate Bill 543, not one of Patrick's priorities, would require schools to reach certain targets in 11 benchmark categories before being able to raise tuition and fees. Every school's targets would be unique and it would be up to the state higher education agency to determine, track and grade colleges' progress.

The 11 categories include four- and six-year graduation rates, total degrees awarded and institutional costs. Seliger similar proposals before, but this year has a better chance of seeing this "performance-based" funding model passed since both the House and Senate have pledged to focus on affordability and access in higher education.

"We will have the opportunity to implement a long-term tuition reform solution which holds institutions accountable and ensures they remain accessible and affordable," Seliger said in a prepared statement. "The focus should be on how to make higher education more accessible and affordable, rather than how to get the state, and students, to pay more."

Before 2003, lawmakers like Seliger had the power to set tuition at all of Texas public colleges and universities. They gave up that control and handed it back to schools that year.

While average tuition and fees have ballooned since 1990 — by 300 percent when adjusted for inflation — a Dallas Morning News analysis showed tuition actually increased at a faster clip when it was controlled by the state Legislature.

Patrick said Democrats who controlled the Legislature in the 1990s and early 2000s might be to blame, and implied Republicans in power now would be better stewards of public money: "The difference between that year that you point to, 2003, is [that is] when the Democrats no longer had control of spending and the Republicans took control of spending."

Last year, The Dallas Morning News investigated which students get financial through the set-aside program. More than 121,000 students from poor and middle-income families benefited from the funds in 2014, all of whom have to demonstrate need to get the money.

Right now, universities set aside more money for financial aid than they use. Some universities told The News they would keep their set-asides in place even if they weren't required by the state to do so.

But doing away with mandatory financial aid programs at state schools means this funding stream will no longer be predictable for those students who depend on the money. Seliger and Patrick argue axing the program will allow schools to lower tuition by as much as 20 percent.

But The News' analysis found the savings would be much lower than that.

If the money given in grants in 2014 were used to alleviate costs for everyone, for example, full-time students at four-year schools would save an average of $482 a year, while more than 21,000 students who received the average award from both grants could lose more than $3,500 each year in aid.

In previous statements to The News, Patrick said this aid wouldn't simply be eliminated. He pledged that the state would ensure those students who depend on set-asides would get the money from somewhere else but did not detail where or how.

"In advocating the elimination of tuition set-asides, the lieutenant governor has repeatedly said that if additional tuition dollars are needed for needy students, the Legislature should step up and provide those funds," Patrick's then-spokesman Keith Elkins said.

Seliger's proposal does not detail how financial aid funds once provided through set-asides would be safeguarded if his bill becomes law.